Ben McElroy is a folk/experimental/ambient artist based in the UK. He has released prolific albums since his 2016 debut ‘Bird Stone’ for whitelabrecs. Notable releases since then include 2018s ‘The Word Cricket Made Her Happy’ for Eilean Rec and 2022s ‘How I Learnt to Disengage From The pack’ on The Slow Music Movement (which was folk album of the month in the Guardian).

«This album evolved from long improvisations on pump organ and cello. I really wanted to play the instruments as a form of therapeutic release, a kind of stimming, paying more attention to this than the Appollonian aspects of the music. So scrape and repetition… anger and using the bow/keys to really try to gnaw into deep, old brain feelings.
I often start things with improvisations, but then tidy, smooth things out… I wanted to keep that aspect to the minimum here.. there is some, but where possible I’ve kept the squeaks, the noises, the mistakes.
The project took on another dimension when I received some funding from PRS Foundation, allowing me to bring more artists (Debbie Armour on vocals, Elinor Rowlands on spoken word and Nick Jonah Davis on guitar). Where possibly, these collaborations were also improvised, in the moment and left a little raw.
The funding also allowed me to create an accompanying film ‘Widdershins & Deosil.’ Shot with filmmaker Benjamin Wigley on 16mm film in Derbyshire, it is an abstract story of magic and puppetry using elements of the album as soundtrack.» - Ben McElroy